Month: October 2015

I’ve been told for quite some time that I couldn’t call myself a lover of the fantasy genre without having read anything by Octavia E. Butler. When my library offered some of her titles a place in the spotlight, I considered it a sign. Kindred it was.

It’s a time travel story. But this time the time traveler is a black woman from the eighties that’s pulled back into the antebellum South, ending up on a slaver’s plantation.

So instead of enjoying the history lesson and possibly being hauled as someone knowledgeable, a genius or a great but terrifying witch, Dana has to fear for her life and freedom all the time. If it looks like a slave, it probably is a slave, after all, no matter how weird she talks. Quickly she discovers a link to the house she keeps returning to, but every time she’s pulled back, it’s harder to adjust and harder to believe that this isn’t her life, these aren’t her problems.

Butler doesn’t mince words nor situations. If a slave does something its owner doesn’t agree with (this ranges from looking at them in a certain way to trying to run), punishment follows. Brutal punishment, written up in vivid detail. If Dana has to suffer, so has the reader. Every small shimmer of hope can be mistrusted, because surely it won’t last. Not in that world.

And yet it’s an incredibly easy, quick read. Maybe it’s the disaster tourist in all of us, you can’t keep your eyes off the terror.

We rode through fields burning like the plains of Hell – Fisk on the black, Banty on the roan bay, and me on Bess, the mule, leading a string of ponies.

The disappointing news: it’s part of a series. The good news: a darker fantasy without becoming overly gruesome, some tense world building without it being on the level of George R.R. Martin.

Two men need to lead a bunch of scouts, soldiers and other along a river boat full of important people. The boat is fueled by a jailed demon, the mountains are full of ancient, sardonic creatures and the family’s guest turns out to be the one reason for or against war with neighboring countries.

This is a gray, grimy fantasy, and – except for the reminiscing, oh-so-different story teller – pretty trope and cliché free. It’s up there in creations from Joe Abercrombie. There’s story and there’s world, neither of them are just very pretty.